Ibrahim Fawal (1933 to 2020), Abe to his friends, was a writer, filmmaker, educator, and one of the most remarkable of NewSouth’s authors. Born in Ramallah, Palestine, he came to the U.S. to attend film school, after which he was the Jordanian assistant director for Lawrence of Arabia. His brother’s sudden death in Birmingham brought him to that city to look after the bereaved family, guide the family business, and become a U.S. citizen. But Abe’s heart was in art, and he began making films, teaching college literature and film classes, and writing what eventually became the PEN Oakland Award-winning On the Hills of God, a sweeping novel exploring the creation of Israel in 1947 from the Palestinian perspective. It and its sequel, The Disinherited, were published by NewSouth. In his late 60s, Abe earned a doctorate at England’s University of Oxford, publishing his dissertation on the foremost Arab filmmaker, Youssef Chahine. Abe was a storyteller, raconteur, and connoisseur of fine spirits, food, and women. We miss him.

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Coronavirus has changed the landscape of book publishing this year, as it has changed nearly every facet of all our lives. In an effort to bring our books directly to you when you are probably spending more time at home, we seized the opportunity to ask our talented authors to read short previews from their books. We hope these videos allow you to engage with the writing world and our published books in a whole new way. Check out the links below for full videos.

Marti Rosner reads from The Slave Who Went to Congress

Kirk Curnutt reads from All of the Belles: The Montgomery Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Wanda Lloyd reads from Coming Full Circle: From Jim Crow to Journalism

Rod Davis reads from East of Texas, West of Hell

Ken Woodley reads from The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia

Frye Gaillard reads from A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost

William Alsup reads from Won Over: Reflections of a Federal Judge on His Journey from Jim Crow Mississippi

Julie Hedgepeth Williams reads from A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells’ Story of Survival

Julie Hedgepeth Williams reads from Three Not-So-Ordinary Joes: A Plantation Newspaperman, a Printer’s Devil, an English Wit, and the Founding of Southern Literature

Aileen Kilgore Henderson reads from Eugene Allen Smith’s Alabama: How a Geologist Shaped a State

Joe Taylor reads from The Theoretics of Love

Jacqueline Trimble reads from American Happiness

Jerry Armor reads from A Home for Wayward Boys: The Early History of the Alabama Boys’ Industrial School

Jennifer Horne reads from Working the Dirt: An Anthology of Southern Poets

Julian McPhillips reads from Civil Rights in My Bones: More Colorful Stories from a Lawyer’s Life and Work, 2005–2015

John Pritchard reads from Junior Ray

Clifton Taulbert reads from The Invitation

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The variety of individuals who have called American Founders a must-read are as diverse as they are distinguished. This recently released work of historical genius from Christina Proenza-Coles traces the impact African-descended peoples have had on the American continent, beginning long before the first English ship reached our shores. It is this wide-ranging and unique perspective that led Henry Wiencek, author of Master of the Mountain, to call American Founders an “important work” that “offers an extraordinary, compelling new narrative of the African role in creating the Americas of the Western Hemisphere.”

We were thrilled to see American Founders named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book Award in the category of history in June of this year. Even more recently, jazz legend and maestro trumpeter Wynton Marsalis surprised us by naming the book his personal favorite on the subject of freedom in a short video for his personal blog. What an achievement for American Founders! Marsalis expertly describes Proenza-Coles’s research and, not surprisingly, ties the significance of the work back to jazz.

Christina Proenza-Coles’s book was also the subject of a penetrating radio program for WYPR’s On the Record, Baltimore’s NPR affiliate. The author herself was a guest, offering insights and little-known stories from American history that show in what remarkable ways AfroAmericans have contributed to the character and early history of our country, including in the struggle for freedom and social justice.

Of course, history is still being made. The momentous events of this moment in the year 2020 place in bold relief the many ways in which African-descended Americans continue to shape our destiny, leading the charge toward a more equitable and just society. For more information, visit http://www.americanfoundersbook.com/.

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Don Siegelman, who served as Alabama’s governor from 1999 to 2003, was wrongfully convicted in proceedings he calls politically motivated. He spent more than five years in prison, including, tragically, time in solitary confinement. Now released, Siegelman has become something quite dangerous in the political game: a motivated policy genius who doesn’t need to worry about popularity or elections. Siegelman is focused on pushing forward reform for our justice system, arguing that political corruption in our courts subverts the rights of defendants and that our prisoners are not receiving the care they desperately need, particularly during this pandemic. Siegelman’s important voice has been broadcast over the airwaves following the release of his new memoir, Stealing Our Democracy, including appearances on NPR stations and Sirius XM.

In an interview with On Point, a program produced by NPR affiliate WBUR, Siegelman had this to say about his experience in the justice system: “If you believe that in every situation one should find a purpose . . . I quickly found mine. My purpose now is to expose what’s going on [in the justice system] and try to change it.” If charges can falsely be brought against a sitting governor, what’s to stop the same from happening to anyone?

As governor of Alabama, Siegelman was arguably one of the most influential political leaders in the heart of both the Confederacy and civil rights movement. He shouldered the weight of Alabama’s history of racial injustice with grace, meeting with and celebrating figures like Rosa Parks, C. T. Vivian, and the late John Lewis. Talking with Joe Madison, “The Black Eagle,” on Sirius XM, Siegelman recalled walking with Lewis and then-president Bill Clinton across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis had been brutally beaten on Bloody Sunday. Siegelman called it the most impactful period of his governorship, remarking that “we all now have to share a greater burden in the struggle for truth, justice, and freedom now that John Lewis and C. T. Vivian have passed.” He agrees with President Obama that the fight continues and that the best way to ensure Lewis’s legacy is to strengthen the legislation he fought so hard for.

And Siegelman isn’t the only one who thinks his prosecution was a sham. A piece in The Washington Spectator analyzes the evidence showing that Karl Rove and other key political figures were covertly involved with prosecutors in his case. Spectator reporter Lou Dubose comments, “If I didn’t know the story . . . I might have considered the title of Siegelman’s new book—Stealing Our Democracy—broad and overstated. Which it is not.” The title of Siegelman’s memoir isn’t an overstatement; unscrupulous politicians, many of them right-wing, are threatening our core values of government through their unlawful use of the justice system. Siegelman’s book is a cautionary tale.

Read more about Stealing Our Democracy here.

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Call it tough love. Alan Cross, a Southern Baptist pastor and NewSouth author, wants to hold accountable Christians who fail to follow the teachings of the Bible in times of social change and strife. Cross had this to say when speaking with NPR recently about how Christians have responded to the killing of George Floyd: “The way that we live and work in the world, how we care for our communities, how we care for our neighbors. Those are all things that the Bible speaks really clearly about.” There is no Biblical or theological justification for not decrying police brutality of African Americans or the great social injustices they still experience.

In his book When Heaven and Earth Collide, Cross critically examines the role Southern churches historically played in the civil rights movement, when many actively supported segregation and racial violence. He claims that the Christian reluctance to denounce racism comes from the religion’s habit “to use God as a means to an end” to avoid uncomfortable conflict. As a Christian, he says, “you should see the pain of people around you and say ‘What can I do?’”

Cross has also recently become outspoken about the response of churches to coronavirus. As churches around the country ignore state and federal regulations and continue to hold worship services despite the risk of COVID infection, Cross argues that our focus must be on safely conducting ourselves before reopening prematurely. “Whether we fight this virus in such a way as to marshal all of our resources to save every life we can should not be open for discussion.” Pastors must balance the dual responsibilities of gathering for worship and putting others’ interests before their own—both Biblical tenets, our author asserts.

Learn more about Cross and his opinions at The New York Times, The Bulwark, NPR, and WBHM. When Heaven and Earth Collide is available for purchase from NewSouth Books and your favorite physical and online booksellers.

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